It’s been far too long in coming, but it feels great to finally get the new design up. I think I did the original photoshop work about seven months ago, but doubts in the initial concept, technical hurdles, and countless other reason kept this site from finally getting done.
Yes, it’s very green now but it’s season based, so that’ll change. The design changes based on what the current season is or when you peruse the archives the articles keep the same theme based on when they were published. With this design had had many goals but the main one was to try and bring more context to when an article was published. To bring in that feeling of spring to or the dead of winter. My mood, and my writing is entirely different during those long days of summer then it is when I’m hold up in my apartment during the grey, wet winter. In a way it’s almost perfect timing to be launching in the thick of spring. It’s so the season of change.
Overall, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. It’s very me, bringing in clean lines, the classic Helvetica, some organic elements, and finally some color into the 110am brand. I also feel it’s a great hybrid of both design concepts and technology, something I’m very passionate about. The design is dependent on server scripts which are based on the first days of the season. Sure it’s modest in comparison to Shaun Inman’s Heap concept but it really captures what I was after. I’ve got plans to bring back the night and day for each of the seasons as well so I can extend the concept even further. My mood/thinking late at night tends to be entirely different then early during the day so I’d love my site and posts to reflect that too. I’m far too picky about colors than one should be though so it might take some time.
A huge thanks has to go out to Garrett Murrary for not only writing the new blogging system I’m using, Simplelog, which is fantastic, but for helping me get my theme switching code working. He basically rewrote the entire thing for me, but I’ll be posting that later if any of you out there are interested. Also, thanks to Dan Cederholm for creating such a perfect set of icons for this design. Being able to easily re-skin them for the different themes was crucial.
I hope you like the new digs. I sure do.
You can also subscribe to a feed of this entry’s comments.
Nice work Tom! Looks great!
Nice! This looks really, really good. Glad you finally launched and it was worth the wait. Can’t wait until Summer to see the change!
Nice to see this live finally. It looks great Tom. I guess I need to get off my arse and do mine now.
T,
I’ve been around these parts for a long time, and I must say this is your finest work today. I won’t hem and haw over the details b/c that is NOT how I roll, but you really have executed a strong vision here.
Especially compared to this version.
woo hoo! Love the green color man! Nice work… What exact dates does the new season color/design roll over? And how do you deal with the whole groundhog thing? :P
Nick: It changes on the first day of each season. It’ll be more clear when I post the code.
All: Thanks! I’m really glad you like it.
tom,
great design here - fresh, unusual but very comfortable look and the seasonal thing rocks.
Very much digging it, Thomas. The subtle columns make for great balance, and the colour use is just as subtle. There’s quite a couple of good design lessons in this.
Looks great! I especially like the squiggles.
Rob: Thanks, yes I wanted to get it to be grid like but allow the colors to keep it from being too “cold”, well except for in the winter.
Lisa: Thanks!
This is a brilliant concept! One could even expand this so that certain blog posts reflected the weather of the day that they were written.. hmm sounds like something I should do when I eventually finish Uni and get my own site up to scratch.
Steve Daniels: Thanks! Yes, my next step is to add night and day versions to go along with the seasons, but the weather has crossed my mine too. I definitely feel differently on a cold rainy day then a bright sunny one and it comes out in my writing. There’s even an idea I had of bringing in some sort of location based services, so it would reflect where I posted. The possibilities when you start thinking about mobile get very exciting. Glad you like it!